creationism
gregladen | August 13, 2010An episode from KTEH's Uncommon Knowledge series: "Darwin under the Microscope: Questioning Darwinism". Dr. Genie Scott goes toe to toe with creationist Dr. William Dembski. Air date: 12/7/2001
pharyngula | August 12, 2010Tonight, at 10pm ET/9pm CT, Futurama features Evolution Under Attack. It looks promising…
Futurama
Thursdays 10pm / 9c
Preview - Evolution Under Attack
www.comedycentral.com
Futurama New Episodes
Roast of David Hasselhoff
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
gregladen | August 12, 2010... can be found here, in this talk by William Phillips speaking at the AAAS:
at 1:08. The implication is that we will only see grief if we don't give religious people the origin of life and the origin of the universe. Presumably we fire the scientists working on these issues.
I found this in a post on related topics: Tact not entirely decided upon at Thinkers' Podium.
gregladen | August 11, 2010Wyoming, which is a pretty stupid state sometimes, although you don't hear about it too often because almost no one lives there, has a candidate for governor who
... wants teachers to be required to teach creationism. "I think it is as valuable a theory as any other theory."
... is opposed to abortion even in the context of rape.
... in what the Casper Star-Tribune called "A momumental display of bad judgement" he advocated for leniency for his friend Ty in a rape case. Ry is now serving 60 years in the pen for raping a Casper woman in her home.
In a poll conducted nearly two weeks ago,…
gregladen | August 9, 2010An adjunct community college professor had a bit of a problem when it came time to teach evolution, according to certain sources:
Student Bryan Jaden Walker wrote on his blog, ... that the professor "glossed over the scientific explanation very quickly (less than 20 seconds), then explained Creationism for about five minutes (5,000-year-old Earth, no evolution, etc)."
...
"Evolution was not taught at all in his class," Weis said. "When he hit that unit, instead of discussing it himself he had a single slide that had both creationism and evolution. When I spoke up and asked him about it, he…
pharyngula | August 8, 2010What do you know…I am reminded that this weekend was the anniversary of the #creozerg, our invasion by 300 rabid secularists of the Creation Museum. Phil Ferguson offers a retrospective, if you want to relive the fun.
mikethemadbiologist | August 7, 2010Can we once and for all recognize that movement conservatives do not believe in the fair exchange of ideas?
A group of influential conservative members of the behemoth social media site Digg.com have just been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives. An undercover investigation has exposed this effort, which has been in action for more than one year.
"The more liberal stories that were buried the better chance conservative stories have to get to the front page. I'll continue to bury their…
gregladen | August 4, 2010For now. This just in from the National Center for Science Education:
Creationism won't be taught in the public schools of Livingston Parish, Louisiana -- at least not yet. The Baton Rouge Advocate (August 1, 2010) reports that "The Livingston Parish School Board won't try to include the teaching of creationism in this year's curriculum, but has asked the School Board staff to look at the issue for possible future action." At a July meeting, inspired by the Louisiana Science Education Act, the board formed a committee to explore the possibilities of incorporating creationism in the parish'…
pharyngula | August 3, 2010I am not a fan of homeschooling; in fact, if I had my way, I'd make it illegal. Too often it's an excuse to isolate kids and hammer them full of ideological nonsense, and in a troubled public school system, it doesn't help to strip students and money from a struggling district — it should be part of the social contract that we ought to provide a good education to everyone.
Before you start protesting (aw, who am I kidding? Some will be howling in protest anyway) I know that there are good homeschool programs, and I have students who were homeschooled and were better prepared than kids coming…
gregladen | August 2, 2010... from the National Center for Science Education.
Click the picture to get the PDF of Darwin's Universe: Evolution from A to Z
.
pharyngula | August 2, 2010Virginia Heffernan did us all a favor: it's easy now to tell who the ignoramuses are by looking for favorable reactions to her ill-informed screed. And of course, if you want to find a real ignoramus, we wouldn't even need that much: we could just look to Rod Dreher, apologist and apparatchik of the Templeton Foundation. He thinks Heffernan is onto something, by which I think he means she reiterates his same clueless biases.
Heffernan is onto something here, and not just with ScienceBlogs. A few years ago, I was in an editorial board meeting with some pro-science academics and others, who had…
gregladen | August 2, 2010
And then .... there's this:
At the beginning of every school year, I try to post new and "the best of" blog posts specifically written for teachers. If you want to see this year's "back to school special" posts in a list, click here. I'll be posting these items through the month of September. There will likely be one or two items new every day.
Please feel free to send a link to all your teacher friends so they know about it!!!! And, if there is something you'd like to see discussed, let me know.
pharyngula | August 1, 2010After listening to Ken Ham set to music, I never want to hear another complaint about auto-tuning Carl Sagan.
pharyngula | August 1, 2010Queensland is allowing fundamentalist Christians to teach religious instruction classes in the public schools — and, as we might have predicted, they are teaching nonsense.
Students have been told Noah collected dinosaur eggs to bring on the Ark, and Adam and Eve were not eaten by dinosaurs because they were under a protective spell.
Set Free Christian Church's Tim McKenzie said when students questioned him why dinosaur fossils carbon dated as earlier than man, he replied that the great flood must have skewed the data.
A parent of a Year 5 student on the Sunshine Coast said his daughter was…
pharyngula | July 31, 2010We're about to leave lovely Vancouver to return to Kent, Washington, so must leave you with something awful to chew on for a while. This is is a beautiful example of why creationists can be so stupid: spelling and grammar errors throughout, misrepresentations of the actual science, and non-stop idiocy. For instance, it is not true that squid, octopus, and cuttlefish have all been found in the Cambrian; the coleoids diverged from a common ancestor in the late Cambrian or early Ordovician. This does not mean that modern coleoids were present in the Cambrian. We've got a pretty good idea of what…
gregladen | July 30, 2010This one is very much worth the effort. Stop here first for some instructions on strategy, then go here to do this thing.
UPDATED!!!!!
Holy crap! The Kent Hovind poll started out looking like this:
What do you believe about evolution?
It's a religion.
* It's a fact!
* It's a reasonable scientific theory.
Then it changed to:
What do you believe about CREATION?
It's a religion.
* It's a fact!
* It's a reasonable scientific theory.
Huh.
pharyngula | July 30, 2010How can I resist? Eric Hovind does the usual trick of putting two reasonable answers on it to split the rational vote, but I think a good goal would be to simply make both of them crush the stupid creationist answer.
What do you believe about evolution?
It's a religion. 46%
* It's a fact! 43%
* It's a reasonable scientific theory. 11%
Fly, my pretties! Destroy the poll!
Corruption rules: that poll was utterly demolished in yet another way. After many votes were accumulated, Hovind changed the wording of the question to "What do you believe about creation?" without changing the…
pharyngula | July 29, 2010It's a simple question.
Do you think Livingston Parish public schools should teach creationism?
Yes, evolution is a lie 22%
Yes, so children can hear both sides 35%
No, religion has no place in science class 29%
No, we don't need to waste tax money on lawsuits 13%
Don't know 1%
I think readers here might have a slightly different set of answers than are up currently, though.
gregladen | July 29, 2010Barbara Forrest, author of Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, has a major blog post addressing the current maneno in Louisiana. A Parish school board there wants to place creationism on equal or higher footing than evolution. Read Barbara's piece here.
tfk | July 27, 2010Disco. president Bruce Chapman wonders:
It is not clear why the number of academic freedom cases seem to be increasing. Is it because the iron hand of ideological conformity is squeezing professors more tightly? Or is it because more subjects of attack are fighting back in court?
Or is it because he's making numbers up from thin air? Might it be not clear that the number of academic freedom cases is increasing? Could Chapman's staff be ginning up meritless claims of academic freedom violations so he has things to blog about?